BuzzMarketing

Lesson two: provocation, astonishment and curiosity.

I have noticed that the best viral campaigns are the provocative ones. I think it is merely due to the fact that people easily remember what is shocking or controversial and that this sort of ad arouses curiosity.

For instance I remembered a viral campaign from Belgium named “rent a wife” in which you can see a man exchanging goods, but not any goods, he changes his wife!

Look at the advert:

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=fELjA6QEpdI

First, you think “What a shocking ad!” but then you wander “What is really hidden behind it?” and you can check it on their website: www.rentawife.be.

Apparently, the website promotes the same idea: you can rent a wife among 9 500 ideal women who are in the ‘rent a wife’ catalogue. But in reality, it is a viral website created by Emakina (a Belgian advert agency) so as to promote another website (a real website): a website where you can rent DVD’s, DVDPost.

This ad did a great buzz and succeeded in making people talk of them, so we can say that the viral ad was effective. In fact, it is really hard to launch a product or a brand and to establish a reputation for a brand new brand and viral marketing may be a way to do it well.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 6:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.